Time Travel

Time for Another Adventure

What is it about time travel that intrigues us so? Whether it's traveling back in time or forward into the future, the idea that we could be present in a time other than the present seems to captivate many. There are so many shows, movies and books about the idea that one person could travel through The Space Time Continuum for some specific purpose. Generally, they are searching to change something in the past that will alter the present, or traveling to the future to see the consequences of the present. Either way the mystery behind what the past and future holds draws many people in.

Through the years there have been dozens of stories told about adventures into the past. Stories told of a time with kings and queens. In 1889, Mark Twain wrote the novel A Yankee in King Arthur's Court. The story of an American man who ends up traveling back to the time of King Arthur. He brings with him the knowledge of the world centuries later. He introduces new ideas, phrases and games all while experiencing a world from another time. Romancing royal ladies and jousting are just a few of the things the American experienced when he traveled back in time. Since the novel was published, there have been movie adaptions such as the one with Bing Crosby in 1949.

More recently there has been the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, which is a story that centers around a young woman living in the 1940s who travels back in time to Scotland in the 1700s. The woman explores a new land with a culture completely different than her own. They speak, dress and carry themselves in a way that is unfamiliar to the main character, the English woman named Claire. The series flashes back and forth across time and culture. The book series did so well for its self that it was turned into a television series, which is now on its third season. The ideas of exploring a new land and culture is sweeping our present day pop culture.

Another, while lesser known, series about time travel is the Map of Time Trilogy by Felix Palm. The first book in the series is laid out in three parts. Palm is heavily inspired by the famous novel The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. This novel, like the others, focuses on adventure in another time. It also delves deeper into the science fiction aspect of how time travel is possible, the notion that a man-made machine could serve as a vessel and carry people through something that is invisible to our eye. It is not like a street or path marked out on a treasure map, and yet in these novels it is believed that a machine can carry and carve a path through time and arrive in an entirely new place.

In The Map of Time, the story shifts views from character to character across its three parts. In the second part the main character travels to the future far from her own. A young woman of the 1800s travels to the year 2000 to find the world she had known completely altered. In the novel, she is mystified by the changes the world has undergone and the new technology the world in enveloped in. Her main reason for traveling to the future was because she craved something different than the world she knew. She yearned for mystery and adventure.

Each of these stories and adaptations brings mystery, magic, excitement, and wonder. They offer a chance of something new and unexpected.